When I lost over a hundred pounds two years ago I followed a very strict diet in which I weighed and measured all of my food and had a basic formula for lunch and dinner: 6oz cooked veggies, 4oz protein, 1 cup RICE.
I consumed a lot of rice! Most of the time it was brown rice.

In our local newspaper there is an article that not just the organic brown rice syrup contains too much arsenic (I had read about that before), but so does the regular brown rice.
As I have been creating My Program here on the blog and in my daily life, brown rice has been central again. In the article in our local newspaper, it said to only eat brown rice a few times a month…. UH OH!
I can’t find that particular article online but I did find the following articles you may be interested in reading:
Arsenic in Organic Brown Rice Syrup and Rice. How to Eat Rice Safely | Green Talk®.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/23/147294466/in-rice-how-much-arsenic-is-too-much
http://www.doctoroz.com/blog/wenonah-hauter/organic-good-arsenic-contamination-still-threat
Well, what am I going to do? Here’s the thing: I HATE experimental cooking. One of the reason I gained so much weight during the preganancy is because I hate to cook in general and when I was pregnant I was just too sick to cook so we ate a lot of pre-packaged foods or take-out. Cooking is just not fun for me, it never has been. But I know how important it is to weight loss so I am committed to doing it. I just don’t like to have to “think” about it too much.
I don’t like trying new recipes. I don’t like experimenting with new ingredients. I like to cook the same dishes over and over again and enjoy new foods when other people cook them (I do LOVE new foods, I just don’t like trying to cook them myself.)
The article in the local paper recommended trying all sorts of new grains – buckwheath, amarinth, quinoa and wild rice. I am going to begrudgingly have to do that I guess. More time in the grocery store and in the kitchen that I dread but I don’t want the baby to get a lot of arsenic through my breast milk. I’m just not happy about it. From these articles it sounds like unsafe arsenic levels in foods have been a known issue for some time. It makes me very nervous when I think about what little knowlege and minimal control I have over my own food supply. I have to buy organic and locally grown as much as possible and hope for the best….
Have you heard or read anything about the dangers of eating brown rice? If you have let me know what you think about it and what you are planning to do about it!